Business

Mastercard has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire 92.4% of UK payments infrastructure operator VocaLink for approximately £700m (US$920m). “Under the agreement, a majority of VocaLink’s shareholders will retain 7.6% ownership for at least three years,” Mastercard says. “This acquisition accelerates Mastercard’s efforts to be an active participant in all types of electronic payments and payment flows and to enhance its services for the benefit of customers and partners.”

Swedish mobile payment specialist Seamless has acquired third party mobile wallet provider MeaWallet. “The purchase price amounts to approximately SEK 42.8m (US$5.03m) and payment is made through an issue in kind of 4,574,328 new shares in Seamless,” Seamless says. “Through the acquisition, Seamless controls important technology in the rapidly growing field of contactless payments.”

The European Commission has approved the proposed acquisition of Visa Europe by Visa. “Visa has now received all regulatory approvals required for the acquisition,” Visa says. “The transaction has already been cleared by both the Jersey and the Turkish competition authorities. The transaction is expected to close in Visa Inc’s fiscal third quarter of 2016. Visa will announce the closing once it has occurred.”

UK businesses using digital banking solutions provider Bottomline Technologies’ C-Series payments processing module will soon be able to send payments to recipients using only their mobile phone number through the Barclays’ Pingit mobile app or… More

UK mobile payment companies SumUp and Payleven have announced that they are to merge and operate as one company under the SumUp name. “By joining forces, the combined company will be perfectly positioned to leverage both SumUp’s proprietary end-to-end hardware and payment platform and Payleven’s leading merchant acquisition capabilities to accelerate growth in a very dynamic market,” SumUp says. “Existing merchants are not affected by the transaction.”

Vodafone Wallet with PayPal NFC-enabled payments is now live in Spain and is expected to be made available across Europe throughout the “back half of 2016”, PayPal CEO Dan Schulman revealed during the company’s Q1 earnings call. More

Visa has reached a preliminary agreement to amend the transaction details of its Visa Europe acquisition in response to feedback from the European Commission. “Instead of an earn-out, the cash consideration payable in the transaction will be increased by €1.75 billion — €750m payable upon closing and €1bn, plus 4% compound annual interest, payable on the third anniversary of closing,” Visa says.

POS terminal maker Ingenico has acquired NFC specialist Think&Go. “Think&Go has developed a technology that enables any kind of digital display to interact with connected objects such as smartphones and transit passes,” Ingenico says. “By drawing on Ingenico Group’s global network and R&D capabilities, Think&Go can now grow its business faster and achieve a twenty-fold increase in the number of screens deployed within three years.”

More than 90% of British, German and Spanish business leaders interviewed for a survey of attitudes to contactless technology have already invested in contactless projects and expect that 10% of all transactions will be contactless within the next three years, a white paper now available to download from the NFC World+ Knowledge Centre reveals. More

Mobile network operator Orange has entered into negotiations to acquire a 65% stake in France’s Groupama Banque with a view to launching a 100% mobile bank. “The launch of Orange Bank is planned for early 2017 in France and on other European markets like Spain and Belgium,” Groupama Banque says. “Services cover daily banking, savings, loans and insurance.”

Indian mobile wallet provider Paytm is to hire 3,000 people to roll out its payments bank services by the first quarter of next year. “The structure of the executive committee for the payments bank is being given shape, while Paytm awaits a final nod from the Reserve Bank of India,” The Times of India reports. The company agreed a “strategic investment” from Alibaba and its affiliate Ant Financial in September.

MasterCard is to provide tokenization services to commercial credit card issuers, enabling corporations and business travellers to load eligible corporate credit cards within participating mobile and digital wallet services using the MasterCard Digital Enablement Service (MDES). “MasterCard will now enable tokenization across virtually all its products — consumer credit, debit and prepaid cards as well as small business and commercial cards,” the payment network says.

European mPOS company SumUp has launched its mobile card acceptance solution in Sweden, expanding its footprint to 14 countries including Germany, the UK and Brazil. “With its PIN+ Card Terminal, SumUp will be the first company to offer a proprietary card terminal to small businesses in Sweden,” the company says. The expansion follows a €10m (US$11.2m) funding round in August 2015.

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba and its affiliate Ant Financial are to make a “strategic investment” believed to be worth some US$680m in Indian mobile payment platform Paytm through an agreement with its parent company One97 Communications…. More

South Africa’s Nedbank is internally testing a proof-of-concept mobile payments app called Accolades that uses BLE beacons to connect customers to retailers as they enter the store. “In concept, the app would provide the product list or menu of the participating store, letting customers select the product and quantity and check it out in their mobile shopping cart without queues,” BusinessTech reports.

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